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The gay panic defense or homosexual advance defence is a strategy of legal defense, which refers to a situation in which a heterosexual individual charged with a violent crime against a homosexual individual claims they lost control and reacted violently because of an unwanted sexual advance that was made upon them. A defendant will use available legal defenses against assault and murder, with the aim of seeking an acquittal, a mitigated sentence, or a conviction of a lesser offense. A defendant may allege to have found the same-sex sexual advances so offensive or frightening that they were provoked into reacting, were acting in self-defense, were of diminished capacity, or were temporarily insane, and that this circumstance is exculpatory or mitigating.
A crime of passion, in popular usage, refers to a violent crime, especially homicide, in which the perpetrator commits the act against someone because of sudden strong impulse such as anger or jealousy rather than as a premeditated crime. A high level of social and legal acceptance of crimes of passion has been historically associated with France from the 19th century to the 1970s, and until recently with Latin America.
In law, provocation is when a person is considered to have committed a criminal act partly because of a preceding set of events that might cause a reasonable individual to lose self control. This makes them less morally culpable than if the act was premeditated (pre-planned) and done out of pure malice. It "affects the quality of the actor's state of mind as an indicator of moral blameworthiness."
Battered woman syndrome (BWS) is a psychological trauma that results from ongoing physical, psychological, and/or sexual abuse, typically at the hands of an intimate partner. This syndrome is one of a group of conditions known as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and can lead to symptoms of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and even physical health problems. BWS can also result in the development of a “survival personality”, in which the person acts out of fear and attempts to avoid further harm. The symptoms of BWS are often divided into three categories: physical, psychological, and behavioral. Physically, victims of BWS may display signs of physical injury or illness, such as bruises, broken bones, or chronic fatigue. Psychologically, they may experience depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and feelings of helplessness, guilt, and fear. Behaviorally, victims may exhibit a range of behaviors, including self-isolation, suicidal thoughts, and substance abuse. It is important to recognize that the effects of BWS may vary from person to person. Treatment for BWS typically includes individual and group therapy, as well as support from family and friends. Treatment may focus on helping the victim to develop healthy coping mechanisms, identify triggers for abusive behavior, and build self-esteem. In addition, it is important to ensure that the victim has access to safe housing and other resources, such as legal aid and counseling. Battered woman syndrome (BWS) is a pattern of signs and symptoms displayed by a woman who has suffered persistent intimate partner violence: whether psychological, physical, or sexual, from her male partner. It is classified in the ICD-9 (code 995.81) as battered person syndrome, but is not in the DSM-5. It may be diagnosed as a subcategory of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The Offences against the Person Act 1861 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It consolidated provisions related to offences against the person from a number of earlier statutes into a single Act. For the most part these provisions were, according to the draftsman of the Act, incorporated with little or no variation in their phraseology. It is one of a group of Acts sometimes referred to as the Criminal Law Consolidation Acts 1861. It was passed with the object of simplifying the law. It is essentially a revised version of an earlier Consolidation Act, the Offences Against the Person Act 1828, incorporating subsequent statutes.
The Homicide Act 1957 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was enacted as a partial reform of the common law offence of murder in English law by abolishing the doctrine of constructive malice, reforming the partial defence of provocation, and by introducing the partial defences of diminished responsibility and suicide pact. It restricted the use of the death penalty for murder.
Self-defence is a defence permitting reasonable force to be used to defend one's self or another. This defence arises both from common law and the Criminal Law Act 1967. Self-defence is a justification defence rather than an excuse.
Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to cause either death or serious injury unlawfully. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker, chapter 14 states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.
The law of Northern Ireland is the legal system of statute and common law operating in Northern Ireland since the partition of Ireland established Northern Ireland as a distinct jurisdiction in 1921. Prior to 1921, Northern Ireland was part of the same legal system as the rest of Ireland.
In English law, provocation was a mitigatory defence to murder which had taken many guises over generations many of which had been strongly disapproved and modified. In closing decades, in widely upheld form, it amounted to proving a reasonable total loss of control as a response to another's objectively provocative conduct sufficient to convert what would otherwise have been murder into manslaughter. It only applied to murder. It was abolished on 4 October 2010 by section 56(1) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, but thereby replaced by the superseding—and more precisely worded—loss of control defence.
In the English law of homicide, manslaughter is a less serious offence than murder, the differential being between levels of fault based on the mens rea or by reason of a partial defence. In England and Wales, a common practice is to prefer a charge of murder, with the judge or defence able to introduce manslaughter as an option. The jury then decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of either murder or manslaughter. On conviction for manslaughter, sentencing is at the judge's discretion, whereas a sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory on conviction for murder. Manslaughter may be either voluntary or involuntary, depending on whether the accused has the required mens rea for murder.
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th century BC.
English criminal law concerns offences, their prevention and the consequences, in England and Wales. Criminal conduct is considered to be a wrong against the whole of a community, rather than just the private individuals affected. The state, in addition to certain international organisations, has responsibility for crime prevention, for bringing the culprits to justice, and for dealing with convicted offenders. The police, the criminal courts and prisons are all publicly funded services, though the main focus of criminal law concerns the role of the courts, how they apply criminal statutes and common law, and why some forms of behaviour are considered criminal. The fundamentals of a crime are a guilty act and a guilty mental state. The traditional view is that moral culpability requires that a defendant should have recognised or intended that they were acting wrongly, although in modern regulation a large number of offences relating to road traffic, environmental damage, financial services and corporations, create strict liability that can be proven simply by the guilty act.
The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It changed the law on coroners and criminal justice in England and Wales.
In Australia, murder is a criminal offence where a person, by a voluntary act or omission, causes the death of another person with either intent to kill, intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, or with reckless indifference to human life. It may also arise in circumstances where the accused was committing, or assisting in the commission, of a different serious crime that results in a person's death. It is usually punished by life imprisonment.
The Libel Act 1843, commonly known as Lord Campbell's Libel Act, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It enacted several important codifications of and modifications to the common law tort of libel.
The first signs of the modern distinction between criminal and civil proceedings were during the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The earliest criminal trials had very little, if any, settled law to apply. However, the civil delictual law was highly developed and consistent in its operation.
English law contains homicide offences – those acts involving the death of another person. For a crime to be considered homicide, it must take place after the victim's legally recognised birth, and before their legal death. There is also the usually uncontroversial requirement that the victim be under the "Queen's peace". The death must be causally linked to the actions of the defendant. Since the abolition of the year and a day rule, there is no maximum time period between any act being committed and the victim's death, so long as the former caused the latter.
In legal systems based on common law, a partial defence is a defence that does not completely absolve the defendant of guilt. A claim of self-defence, for example, may be a complete defence to a charge of murder, leading to an acquittal; or it may be a partial defence, which leads to conviction to a lesser verdict, such as manslaughter.
DPP v Camplin (1978) was an English criminal law appeal to the House of Lords in 1978. Its unanimous judgment helped to define the main limits of defence of provocation chiefly until Parliament replaced the defence with one of "loss of control" in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Its ratio decidendi continues to have precedent value as the new "loss of control" defence is a renaming to avoid creep of the term into scenarios for which it was never intended, above all a blurring with diminished responsibility.
References
- 1 2 The Coroners and Justice Act 2009, Section 54
- ↑ The Coroners and Justice Act 2009, Section 56
- ↑ Fitz-Gibbon, Kate (2013). "Replacing Provocation in England and Wales: Examining the Partial Defence of Loss of Control". Journal of Law and Society. 40 (2): 280–305. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6478.2013.00623.x.
